Ice Skate Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! Hope you’re enjoying a three-day weekend!  This week’s cake is one I made almost a year ago and just found the pictures.   This cake was certainly a challenge to make, but it prepared me for the roller skate cake I made earlier this year.

I was asked to make a pair of white ice skates for a little girl who loves ice skating.  I thought about making the skates stand up, but given the number of servings they needed, I decided it was best to make them look like they were laying down.  Besides, I was sure I was up for that much of a challange!

Everything on this cake is totally edible!  The blades are made out of gumpaste and painted with edible silver paint.  Even the laces can be eaten…they are hand rolled and shaped.  Check out the detail on the end of the laces and the point of the blade!

Everyone raved about how tasty the cake was….in fact, I heard that the kids at the party even ate the blades!

Happy Memorial Day to all my readers!

Congratulations Graduates!

Happy Sunday everyone!  I made this week’s cake for a graduation party for my brother and sister and several close friends.  While I love making cakes for anyone, it is so special to make cakes for friends and family.

We were expecting about 75 people at the party, so I decided to make a sheet cake since that it is the easiest way to serve that many guests.  Since we were honoring 5 graduates from three different schools (high school and college), I wanted recognize each one individually.  

So, I made a graduation cap for each one in their school colors.  I used gumpaste for the caps since I needed them to hold their shape.  I rolled out the mortar board then shaped the part that goes around your head….complete with bunches in the back to look like elastic!  And, yes, the one in front is flat for a reason...you'll see on the final cake.

While the hats were drying, I cut out the 2011 charms to go on the tassels.  The long ones are for the high school graduates and the others are for the college graduates. 

I painted them with edible gold paint so they looked the most like the real thing.  One of the hats needed to be silver, so I painted it with edible silver as well.

Then I moved on to the actual cake!  I was planning to do a vanilla cake filled with strawberry curd and fresh sliced strawberries frosted with lemon buttercream….so delicious!  Since the filling was going to be pretty thick, I piped a “dam” of buttercream around the edge to hold in all the filling.  This also keeps the strawberry color from seeping into the buttercream and making the side of the cake pink.

I then filled it with strawberry curd and laid on the sliced berries . . . and ate a few along the way too J

After I put on the top cake layer, I frosted the whole thing with the crumb coat to seal in any crumbs so the final coat of buttercream would be perfectly smooth.

Once the final coat of buttercream had set up, I placed the hats on the cake and added their tassels (which were handmade out of very thinly cut strips of gumpaste), and piped the words of out royal icing and voila!

Here’s a close up of each hat:

I didn’t forget about Hannah’s, but the picture of that one didn’t turn out…sorry Hannah!

Congratulations to all of you! 

Cookies!

Happy Sunday!  The weather while I was typing last week’s post was certainly much nicer than today’s!  I’m enjoying a cup of hot tea just to keep my fingers warm enough to type!  Well, not quite, but it’s still way too cold for May.

While not a cake, today’s featured design was just as fun to decorate.  I made several dozen decorated sugar cookies for a little girl’s birthday party.  She enjoys horseback riding, so they requested sugar cookies to look like little horses.

Usually for decorated cookies like this I use a technique called flooding.  To “flood” cookies, I use royal icing to pipe a border around the edge of the cookie which acts like a dam. 

Thinner royal icing is then poured onto the surface of the cookie.  Since the icing is thin, it forms a perfectly smooth surface.  And since royal icing dries very firmly, the designs hold their shape and won’t get messed up in transportation.

For these cookies, though, I slightly more of a challenge.  The birthday girl really liked chocolate, so they wanted to know if I could make chocolate royal icing instead.  I had never flavored royal icing before and I was initially skeptical of adding chocolate or cocoa powder because I knew that royal icing dries the way it does because there isn’t any fat in it.  Add in some kind of fat – butter, shortening – or in this case, chocolate – and I was afraid that the icing wouldn’t set up properly.  But after some research I found that a small amount of cocoa powder could be added to the icing without adversely affecting it! 

Bowling Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday!  This week’s cake was for a super cute little boy who has gotten a different sports-themed cake for his birthday the last few years.  Last year’s theme was Auburn football and this year it was bowling.   The whole family gets dressed up for the theme too!

They didn’t have a specific design in mind this year so I made the cake in the shape of a bowling pin and made a little boy to look like him out of white chocolate clay.  The bowling balls are made from white chocolate clay too. 

The week I was working on this cake, the weather turned really warm.  So I had to adjust my recipe for white chocolate clay to make it firmer.  My original recipe worked just fine in the cooler months, but the first attempt at making the little boy just kept slowly slouching as the chocolate softened in the warm air.  Eventually, I found the right proportions. 

You can’t see it too well in the picture, but he’s wearing a cute little bowling shirt too!

This cake was a classic white cake with vanilla buttercream…simple but oh so yummy!

Gone with the Wind Cake

Happy Sunday!  I hope you had a wonderful Easter!  I took the week off from blogging to spend some time with friends and family.  For brunch, I made a delicious Lemon Berry Trifle with Almond Tuiles.

Yum….creamy lemon mousse layered with fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, served with crisp almond tuiles. 

Tuiles are a very delicate cookie made from finely ground almonds.  They get their name from their similar shape to Spanish roof tiles called the same thing.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

This week’s cake was my absolute favorite cake to decorate.  The client requested a “Gone with the Wind” themed cake.  As an avid Gone with the Wind fan myself, I was excited about this cake from the start.  I love painting as well, so the design was perfect.  I worked together with one of my friends on this project – she did all the baking and I took care of the decorating.

The design on the side is hand painted using edible food coloring.  I combined several shots of Tara from the movie as well as the classic Gone with the Wind silhouette shot.

  

The magnolia on top is made of gumpaste.  Each petal is cut and shaped by hand, then assembled on the cake.  For the center of the magnolia, I shaped the gumpaste, then used scissors to snip the outside to give it some texture. 

The ribbon around the base is a sage green fabric ribbon, so its the only part of the cake that's not edible.

Thanks for checking out my blog!  I hope you are enjoying all my cake creations as well as my recipes and tidbits too!